I am that exact type of person that plans annual holidays using the Ordance Survey maps of Ancient and Roman Britain. I spend days hiking through the remote countryside in the rain with a napsack full of boiled eggs to find the spaces prehistoric people once lived and thrived.

Fancying myself as Lord of the Ringforts, Mr. Crabb at Fogou Models offered me the very first castings of his latest terrain project in return for photos of them painted nicely. And paint them I did.

This is the basic ringfort, built from seven wall sections and one gate section. All the pieces have an interlocking brickwork design on the outer face to disguise the component joins. I don’t know how Mr. Crabb got it all to line up so flawlessly, but I suspect dark Cornish sorcery.

If that understated rectangular doorway with its stone lintel are too low key for you, there’s also a fantasy style gateway with a pair of towers flanking a bronze goblin-faced gate sculpted by the Kev Adams. Now you can have much larger things get in and out the fort – like trolls, ogres and my reference library on prehistoric and Dark Age structures.

To accompany the ringfort, I also painted this pair of thatched buildings which can either go inside the fort as the defended structures, or act as standalone pieces. I’m going to pair the recentangular one with my Dark Age Church as a crofter’s dwelling.

But wait! There’s still more! There’s a nice pair of thatched stilted granaries, a pigsty, a well, firewood and pots that I’ve used to make a complete village.

I got a bit carried away painting freehand patterns onto some of the pots – I like to imagine them as vessels with histories of their own that come from the extensive trade networks. I also see them as a nice way of adding life to a scene, and they make for subtler representations of material wealth than the classic objective marker of a treasure chest full of gold coins.

There’s a desstroyed wall section you can use to represent a partially ruined fort, and even switch into your fort mid-game if you’re playing a siege.

Here’s a pile of Orcs pouring through it to fight the Fellowship of the Ring.

Stone buildings are pretty timeless, and with a bit of “set dressing” in the form of modern crates, here it is being used in the Napoleonic era.

Nicely, the doors are cross-compatible with the other Fogou offerings, so a quick switcheroo and this fort section is ready for science fiction wargames too. Thanks to everyone that’s pointed out the door looks like a Confederate flag.

Finally, my cat (who is coincidentally named after a ringfort) has also found a great use for the piece.

So thanks to Mr. Crabb for letting me be the first to get one! If you’d like your own, they’re currently over on Kickstarter and will be added to the Fogou Models site in the future.

Ninjabread out!

The gaming table at Ninjabread HQ has a new centerpiece in the form of an absolutely giant space castle. This humungous 18″ x 18″ fortification dominates the desert landscapes of the far future – a rock solid bastion for miniature soldiers to defend. This is Fort Hardknox.

This giant resin kit came courtesy of Fogou Models. I got to paint and keep an advance casting of it in return for encouraging all of you to go and back its incredibly succesful Kickstarter campaign.

I’ve kept the paint scheme quite neutral so I can deploy it on the table for games of Strontium Dog, Warhammer 40,000, Judge Dredd, Doctor Who, Necromunda et cetera. It perfectly suits Mad Max, Fallout, Gorkamorka and anything with a post-apocalyptic flavour.

The Psycho Sam miniature was the event exclusive from the Oldhammer USA Weekend that Grove kindly gifted me. Asslessman, Lopez and Sean have all already painted this miniature in the red white and blue of the American flag, so to out-patriot all of them I modelled mine holding an actual American flag.

There’s a gallery of yet more Psycho Sams in the Oldhammer Community.

Asslessman, axiom and cheetor have all painted their own advance castings of Hardknox. The four of us have been comparing notes, swapping photos and bickering about whose painting approach is the best for months now. There’s talk of us combining our forts into one truly giant structure that would be big enough for the smallest of us (cheetor) to sleep inside.

And finally, don’t forget to check out the Fogou Kickstarter, ending today!

With a Strontium Dogs game on the horizon from Warlord Games, my mind is all a-flutter with 2000AD miniatures.  Games Workshop had the licence in the 1980s and put out a sweet range of figures just before creating the seminal Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader, and this is the first release in that range – the iconic Judge Dredd.

“Taking photographs of a judge on a blue fade background – that’s five years in an isocube, creep.”

Fascinatingly a number of 2000AD figures were recycled into the nascent Warhammer 40,000 range.  Figures either had their parts cannibalised (like Traitor General‘s head reappearing as an Imperial Inquisitor’s), or were rereleased with new names (like Slaughter Margin “Mek” and Mega Hound becoming Imperial Assault Trooper and Robo-Dog).

“Rotating a judge on a blue fade background – that’s fifteen years in an isocube, creep.”

I went for blue and an NMM yellow on the uniform instead of black and gold to emphasise the comic book nature of Dredd.  The figure is an experiment but I’m really pleased with how he turned out and will happily roll the colour scheme out to the rest of my Justice Department miniatures.

Dredd guarding N₂0 canisters – bet that’s a … barrel of laughs.

The chemical barrels and wooden pallets are advance castings from the excellent Fogou Models – they should feature in a Kickstarter soon.  I’ve went utterly overboard with biohazard symbols and other freehand.

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only Warhol.

Friends Asslessman and axiom have also painted sets of barrels, and expertly steered me away from rusting up the blue barrels as  turns out they’re made (in real life) from high-density polyethylene and not metal.

As well as more judges, I fancy painting a gang of the classic 2000AD alien mercenarys – Kleggs – for a Necromunda campaign.  Or Rogue Stars games.  Watch this space!